Amidst the hullaballoo over Republican Rand Paul's upset victory in the Kentucky GOP primary for US Senate, one of the few journalists to raise the issue of Paul's somewhat uncomfortable proximity to Christian Reconstructionism has been Alternet's Adele Stan, who observes that Rand Paul's father Ron Paul is personal friends with one of the bigger names in the Christian Reconstructionist movement, Howard Phillips, founder of the US Taxpayers Party - now re-branded as The Constitution Party. But there's direct evidence tying Rand Paul to the Constitution Party, whose national platform declares,

"The goal of the Constitution Party is to restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations...

The U.S. Constitution established a Republic rooted in Biblical law"

As Adele Stan notes, Phillips gave a keynote address at the Ron Paul For President Convention in Minneapolis a year and a half ago. And, Ron Paul endorsed the 2008 Constitution Party's presidential candidate in the 2008 election, Chuck Baldwin.

As it's said, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. In a May 21, 2009 appearance on the Alex Jones Show, Rand Paul affirmed that his political beliefs were extremely close to those of his father Ron:

Alex Jones - "You're basically what I would call a chip off the old block. Your policies are basically identical to your father, correct?"

Rand Paul - "I'd say we'd be very very similar. We might present the message sometimes differently.. I think in some ways the message has to be broadened and made more appealing to the entire Republican electorate because you have to win a primary." [Rand Paul on Alex Jones, 5/21/09]

So it isn't altogether surprising that Rand Paul could be found, in April 2009, at a rally held by a political party that's been heavily influenced by a movement whose founder, Rousas Rushdoony, advocated executing homosexuals by stoning, wanted to reimpose the institution of slavery, and maintained that the Sun rotated around the Earth.

In April 25, 2009, Rand Paul was the featured guest speaker at The Constitution Party of Minnesota's "event of the year." I've found video of Rand Paul at an afternoon Minneapolis rally, so he was without a doubt in the vicinity.

Just to make sure I talked to Tammy Houle, whose phone number is the Minnesota Constitution Party listed contact number, and she confirmed to me that Rand Paul had indeed spoken at the April 25th evening event [See inside for the notice, posted on a Ron Paul forum web site, advertising the occasion]

The odd thing about Rand and Ron Paul's political tendency is that it offers liberals and progressives a number of points of agreement, probably more than with more 'mainstream' conservative GOP politicians. For example, Ron Paul has been a principled opponent of the invasion of Iraq and US military adventurism in the Mideast generally, and Rand Paul espouses the same position.

But it's hard to get much more extreme than Christian Reconstructionism, whose founder Rushdoony was a Holocaust denier, a racist, a creationist, and an advocate for slavery who claimed that African-American slaves were lucky.

Weigh it for yourself - Howard Phillips, who founded the Constitution Party, has, according to journalist Frederick Clarkson, described Rousas J. Rushdoony as "my wise counseler."

As Rushdoony wrote in Politics of Guilt and Pity (Fairfax, VA: Thoburn Press, [1970] 1978),

the white man is being systematically indoctrinated into believing that he is guilty of enslaving and abusing the Negro. Granted that some Negroes were mistreated as slaves, the fact still remains that nowhere in all history or in the world today has the Negro been better off. The life expectancy of the Negro increased when he was transported to America. He was not taken from freedom into slavery, but from a vicious slavery to degenerate chiefs to a generally benevolent slavery in the United States. There is not the slightest evidence that any American Negro had ever lived in a "free society" in Africa; even the idea did not exist in Africa. The move from Africa to America was a vast increase of freedom for the Negro...

None of this, of course, is Rand Paul's direct responsibility. But it certainly is suggestive.

And so, without further ado, here's the April 9, 2009 post advertising Rand Paul's April 25th appearance at the Minnesota Constitution Party "Liberty Banquet 2009" that's posted on Ronpaulforums.com :

The Constitution Party of Minnesota announces with anticipation, the event of the year -- Liberty Banquet 2009

Patriots and statesmen will come together on April 25th to hear featured guest,

Dr. RAND PAUL

Don't miss this opportunity to unite with other like-minded folks for an evening of inspiration and motivation. The evening begins at 5:00 pm with a social hour, dinner at 6:00, followed by introductions and guest speakers. Preceding Dr. Paul, we will hear a few words from the two tenacious gentlemen that recently accepted the co-chairmanship of the CPMN Veteran's Coalition, Leon Moe and John Salsbury.

The Chaska VFW will be the location of the event, which is located one block west of the intersection of Old Hwy. 212 and Hwy. 41 near downtown Chaska. The cost of tickets is $30 per person or 4 for $100. Get yours soon by sending payment to CPMN Treasurer, Patricia Becker, 23078 - 21st Avenue, St. Augusta, MN 56301.

I'm not sure being tagged as a Reconstructionist is a negative in a state that elected Jim Bunning to the U.S. Senate twice.

Now, given that he's already had to flip-flop on one of his "principled" Libertarian positions less than 48 hours after winning his primary (with fewer votes than either Democratic primary candidate), I suspect that hammering him on his other Libertarian beliefs will find plenty of low hanging fruit.

While his father manages to get elected to the House in a small corner of Texas, I am not sure that Rand Paul realizes yet just how bright the spotlight is going to be on him in the months to come. I find it hard to believe that his Libertarianism is going to find much favor with the electorate once they understand how extreme he really is.

Then, there's the obvious corollary - and how, in practice, would we be able to tell the difference ? It would be hard. But, we do know Rand Paul goes to church, so he's not a Randian in the classic sense. Ayn Rand had little love for religion, I've heard.

One of Rushdoony's early books was "The Nature of the American System" published in 1965. The 2001 edition list those who "made the 2001 reprinting of this book possible" including "The Howard Phillips Family." In Chapter Four, Rushdoony defines tyrant as meaning anyone who rules without the sanction of religious law. As in most theocratic narratives, France is described as unleashing this evil on the world.

"...this new French state, grounded on reason rather than the law of God, became at once the heavenly and the earthly city of the anti-Christian and deistic forces of the day. Rushdoony then traces the American trail of "French sympathizers and Jacobins, deists, Illuminati, Freemasons, and soon the Unitarians." He defends the Confederacy as fighting against the greater evil in society, stating, "the anti-Christian, Jacobin attack on slavery had to be fought and slavery defended, because the revolutionary reordering of society would be far worse than anything it sought to supplant."

Rushdoony quotes Benjamin M. Palmer in his Thanksgiving sermon of 1860 in New Orleans, "Last of all, in this struggle, we defend the cause of God and religion. The abolition spirit is undeniably atheistic. The demon which erected its throne upon the guillotine in the days of Robespierre and Marat, which abolished the Sabbath and worshipped reason in the form of a harlot, yet survives to work other horrors...."

From Rushdoony's "Institutes of Biblical Law" (1973), page 100, "In colonial New England, the covenantal concept of church and state was applied. Everyone went to church, but only a limited number had voting rights in the church and therefore the state, because there was a coincidence of church membership and citizenship. The others were no less believers, but the belief was that only the responsible must be given responsibility. One faith, one law, and one standard of justice did not mean democracy. The heresy of democracy has since worked to create havoc in church and state, and it has worked towards reducing society to anarchy."

Don't forget papa Paul's connection to one time aid, Gary North. In the latest Faith for All of Life, R. J. is quoted writing about Hitler claiming, "...National Socialism was clearly a homosexual movement." pg. 2

I had assumed, sight unseen, that Rand Paul was an orthodox Libertarian ideologue (a viewpoint for which I have almost as little use as I do for Theocracy). Clearly, Libertarianism and Theocracy as such are radically incompatible as ideologies.

Knowing who one's associates are, or whom one has spoken in front of is not necessarily a reliable guide to one's own beliefs or positions. Politics make strange bedfellows, and alliances of convenience abound - not to mention friendships and even marriages across political lines.

What would be interesting would be to locate and analyze what Rand Paul actually SAID to those gatherings. This might give us a better handle on what he is actually about.

some theocrats see themselves as libertarians. Rj. Rushdoony himself told Bill Moyers (in Rushdoony's only televised interview) that he sees himself as a libertarian. There are a lot of paradoxes in all this. Even theocrats do not necessarily conform to cookie-cutter stereotypes.

To Bruce Wilson: Your post above links to your 2007 AlterNet post Copernicus Was Wrong?: The Flat Earth Temptation, which in turn links to some blog posts, by other authors, claiming that Warren Chisum (a Representative in the Texas State House) is a geocentrist. Researching this further, I found that the evidence that Chisum himself is a geocentrist seems flimsy, although a memo did go out, under his name, forwarding a memo by another creationist politician attempting to prove a wacky creationist legal claim by referring to pages on a geocentrist website. For details of what I found, see my recent Talk to Action post Powerful Texas politician, Warren Chisum, rejects modern astronomy?.

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